Room To Breathe
by ratchetblack
Summary: Mort wants to go outside. His guilt won't let him.
1. Claustrophobia

Mort paces.

He walks around in circles so much that even if he sits down on the couch for a moment, his mind still feels like it's retracing his steps all by itself. His cabin has become claustrophobic, and Mort is beginning to feel the discomfort. He has an unbearable urge to dash outside without putting on his jacket, to run around in the woods by the lake until his breath comes in gasps and his muscles ache from the exertion.

He pauses for a moment and looks outside, weighing his options in his mind and carefully searching out the flaws in this new idea, this new plan that he suddenly wants to see put into action. He's not really fit enough for a terribly long run, he decides rationally, what with his inactive lifestyle and his unhealthy diet of chips, soda, and precious little else--

_what about the corn you grew on top of a shallow double grave?_

Mort flinches at this unwanted disturbance. It's just a voice in his head, he knows that, but it sounds so real, so frighteningly real that it pushes away all other reason. He knows that he is mentally unstable (_crazy, mad, certifiably insane_) and possibly (_no, not possibly... make that definitely_) dangerous to others, and most of all he knows that he is listening to something that isn't really there (_are you, though?_)... But knowing all of that doesn't make hearing the voice any less unnerving.

He steels himself and forces his rebellious thoughts back onto the subject at hand. He really wants to get out of his cabin, away from the awful memories and the suffocating walls. Now that he has seized upon the idea of running away, it seems that he's finally found a way to escape.

He stands by his front door and peers through the gauzy old curtains. There's some potential danger in going outside, he thinks. He could get sick from the cold, he could fall down somewhere and be unable to call for help, he could--

_catch a glimpse of an old station wagon glaring at him with dead headlights from the depths of the lake, silently accusing him of the acts that had condemned it to serve as a coffin for two other men_

Mort suddenly does not feel like going outside anymore. There is a knot in his stomach that wasn't there a moment before. He feels sick. He shies nervously away from the door and its dust-covered, cobweb-like curtains. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up for no reason. He ignores it; he's learned to.

He shuffles back into the main part of his house, heading upstairs to work. He thinks better of it about halfway up (_the story's a lost cause at this point, the hero's a witless numbskull, and the plot's going nowhere_) and traipses back down to seek refuge in the kitchen, but he doesn't feel like eating, either.

He sighs, frustrated, standing uselessly in front of a kitchen that would've been spotless if not for the dust that has accumulated from general disuse. He turns around; walks deliberately from the kitchen to the living room, where he vaults over the back of his couch and sprawls across it a little sloppier than he'd intended. He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling, heaves a sigh and--

_the murderer lies back on his couch and contemplates his life with the air of a man removed from society and isolated from the world_

Mort stuffs his head under a pillow.


	2. Distraction

Mort sits.

He slouches lazily on his old couch and casts an eye over the coffee table, which is buried in stacks of old manuscripts that he never sent to his editor. He probably never will, he decides. The writing is disjointed, sloppy, nonlinear. Nowhere near his best work; bad writing, all of it. He glances over each stack, eyes lingering on each tentative title, and reaches over to pick up the one closest to him.

He looks over the sheaf he's selected. It's relatively thin compared to some of the other piles on the table. He uses the sleeve of his bathrobe to wipe off the dust on the front page, a thick layer accumulated from what was likely several years. Some of it stubbornly clings to the paper, hiding beneath the staple in a fuzzy mass. He tries to blow it away, but only succeeds in creating a miniature storm of dust that gets up his nose and settles in his hair--

_just like the memory of your lovely dead wife, isn't it? a clinging living thing you can't get rid of, that seeps into your pores until you can't take anymore_

Mort shoots a glare at nothing in particular. The voice hadn't bothered him all day, but apparently a cloud of dust could inspire a cynical metaphor. Just what he needed--

_well? listen to me. what _will_ you do when you can't take anymore? when the strain of holding yourself together becomes too much? answer me this_

By now he's gotten used to the voice and its irritating tendency to speak when he wants silence, but he'll never get used to what it says. Part of his mind helpfully supplies the visual metaphor of a man in a wide-brimmed black hat (_well, hello, mr ray-nee_) hitting him over the head with a shovel. The voice might as well be doing the same thing with his guilt.

He turns his attention back to the manuscript in his hand. He'd never finished this particular one, he remembers, because he'd started it out too morbid and had had nowhere to go but down. The main character was something of an alter ego for him, a foil he used to let out his anger and betrayal after he'd discovered Amy (_doublecrossing unfaithful bitch, wasn't she?_) in Ted's motel room over half a year ago.

He flips through the pages, seeing the events unfold in his mind as he goes along. He sees the terrified expression on Aileen's beautiful face as her wrathful husband, Marty, discovers the shirt that doesn't belong to him. He feels a sympathetic echo of rage when Aileen's collar slips down and reveals a dark bruise that wasn't there the night before. Most of all, he feels the tumult of furious betrayal rushing through him as if he were walking through that motel door all over again--

_you weren't good enough for her so she left you, but oh, you taught her a lesson, didn't you? a lesson she won't ever, ever forget because you _killed her_ you sick demented crazy man and you _enjoyed_ it_

"Maybe _you_ did," snaps Mort, and immediately regrets it. It's the first time in weeks he's responded to the voice's taunts. Would it go away if he didn't talk to it? he wonders, and tries to remember a time when the voice simply hadn't been there.

He turns his attention back to the manuscript and searches for salvageable material, thinking that maybe he could fish out a good metaphor or description from this sea of cloudy writing. His eyes dart past bitterness and regret, past realization and betrayal, and finally--

_she backed against the wall, begging for mercy when there was none to be had; her husband advancing towards her with all his wiry strength coiled to strike, his arms outstretched as if to embrace her lovingly, his curled fingers giving away his true intention to snatch, throttle, seize her around the throat and pin her against the wall and scream with all his betrayal and hurt her the way he felt he had been hurt, and asked one simple word: "why?"_

Mort doesn't remember why.


End file.
